Remembering My Dad
Dad died eight years ago today so I’ve been looking at photographs, re-reading my diary from that time and reading the blog post that I wrote at the time. I’m so pleased that I have those memory aids to keep his memories alive in my mind, to make sure that I don’t forget him at least once a year. I took the opportunity to tidy up the blog post and to add some photo’s to my journal, so my memories are a little bit stronger today than they were last year and I think I might try and hunt out more photos next year too and maybe start doing the same thing for my Nan.
My day started better than usual, I went to bed earlier and woke up before my alarm, I will still a bit groggy and still hit snooze, but I felt better than I have for a few weeks. I walked to Caffe Nero and only spent an hour there because I had an appointment with the Dermatologist at Clifton Hospital. It’s 30 minutes walk from Caffe Nero and I arrived about five minutes early and only had to weight for a few more. The guy I saw was called Dr Walter Bottomley MB ChB, FRCP and my first impression was pretty negative. He seemed very disengaged, definitely didn’t listen to me, seemed out of his depth and hardly made eye contact. By way of illustration even though I’d told him THREE times that the rash occurred during the rapeseed flowering season, May to July, he still asked to see it! He also hadn’t even looked up the primary health conditions that I suffer from, so his response was basically that this rash was probably a rare symptom of a rare condition brought on by a rare side effect of a drug that I took as a kid, basically he had no idea of what it was or how to treat it. Still he’s going to do some tests, and I can ‘look forward’ to four visits to the hospital over the period of a week soon.
To cheer myself up I decided to walk to Fairhaven Lake Cafe, but as it opened at ten I still had half an hour to kill, so I walked to Lytham green and then back along the prom. It started raining after about ten minutes, so I was pretty wet when I arrived, but I soon warmed up, read the paper and enjoyed my bacon and eggs. I then walked home via the square and did a bit of food shopping.
Much of the afternoon was spent on my exercise bike watching an episode of Limitless (which I really like) and half of River Cottage Treatment. I also had a good long talk with Jennie about her financial concerns, did a couple of loads of clothes washing, washed our bedding, did the washing up, cleaned the kitchen, baked bread and prepared dinner for Jennie and Debbie.
I’m hoping to go to bed early again tonight, to see if I can further improve my energy levels during the day. I didn’t have time for a nap, so I need to be sleeping longer.
The photo today is from yesterday’s walk. Dad loved the Lake District, but he never made it to Haweswater, his favourite place was Coniston, but I don’t have any photo’s from there – perhaps I will rectify that next week!
